Sunday 13 September 2015

Wonderful Woodchat!

This morning I went through my usual rota of checking if anything unusual had been spotted in my local area and it came to my surprise that a Woodchat Shrike had been spotted at Nosterfield! This was quite unexpected as I would usually think of a Woodchat turning up at the coast plus brilliant news was that Nosterfield was only about half an hour away! As far as I knew we weren't doing anything this afternoon so as you expected we spent this afternoon looking for the Woodchat.

Upon arrival the bird was on show straight away which was brilliant news! For nearly all the time it stayed within a little patch of broken branches, thistle and bushes apart from one time it flew up onto a fence post. It was fairly distant but thankfully we had brought the scope for once! It was much better looking at it from the scope. This Woodchat was a Juvenile which aren't quite as nice as the adults but it was still quite a striking bird. Through the scope you could see whenever it flew a couple of big white wing bars which stood out very clearly and made it very distinctive. This is my 2nd Shrike in a week (Red Backed at Spurn) and my 3rd this year! Here is a few record shots of the bird, they are pretty awful but it was pretty distant!






Woodchat Shrike

1 comment:

  1. Great afternoon. Sunny, nice people around and a stunning juvenile.
    Well done getting any kind of shot Ellis.

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